(C) in CC works

A while ago I wrote Nathan Yergler of the Creative Commons Foundation about the logistics of including (C) work in a CC book? Amazingly I couldn’t find any guidance about this on their site, or elsewhere. It seemed like something you could obviously do, but the publisher’s legal dept had questions. So Nathan answered them:

Hey Michael –

Thanks for following up on this via the phone today. I talked to some colleagues, and generally the situation is this:

* You can use a copyrighted work, assuming you have the rights to do so (either under fair use or explicitly negotiated), in a CC licensed work so long as you point out the exceptions in the license notice. This is effectively what Creative Commons does with our website — see the footer text where it states “except where otherwise noted…”

* With respect to the digital version of your book that you were asking about, you would typically negotiate rights for digital redistribution along with the rights to use the copyrighted works in the first place. Whether you have the rights to redistribute the pictures isn’t impacted by the CC license, or the fact that its included in a CC licensed work.

And as I mentioned on the phone, Creative Commons can not offer legal advice or opinions and this should not be interpreted as such.

Hope this helps, and let us know if/when your book is released under a CC license; we’d love to mention it on the CC blog.